Thomas drew his handgun and leveled it on Mundo. If he could hit him at this distance without wounding another of his soldiers he’d have killed him. This was all his fault. He should have seen through that trick. That was kindergarten-level stuff.
Now that he was getting the brunt of the fire, Lawdog had to do something. He stomped the pedal and accelerated the heavy truck to the extent that was possible, weaving from side to side in a futile attempt to evade fire. He immediately banged into a parked vehicle, unable to see through a shattered windshield. The soldiers in the bed of his truck aimed over the cab and returned fire on the distant rooftop. It was a couple of hundred yards away and they couldn’t even make out what they were shooting at. One of them launched a grenade in that direction from his M203 but he aimed low and his target was at the far end of the effective range. The grenade blew harmlessly along the street, blowing out a shop window and knocking over the sign for an insurance company.
Another truck further back in the convoy made a sudden turn to the left and pulled off the main street. The maneuver put a brick building between them and the shooters, sparing them from further gunfire. Trucks further back followed suit, ducking into alleys and side streets. Men poured from those trucks, taking up weapons and dispersing along the streets.
“That way!” Thomas barked, gesturing wildly toward the shooters.
Lawdog had miraculously not been injured but he couldn’t see a thing through the bullet-riddled windshield. He was trying to get his truck to safety, taking rounds and unable to escape the withering gunfire. Steering wildly, attempting evasive maneuvers the truck was too awkward to manage, he ran up on a fire hydrant. He tried to reverse off of it, but judging by the sound of screeching metal, only managed to do more damage to the undercarriage.
Thomas raised his radio. “You’re only making it worse, Lawdog. Get out of that vehicle. Return fire! Quit running and fight back!”
Thomas was disappointed to see that Lawdog apparently had no more sense than Mundo. He couldn’t be certain that Lawdog had heard his radio over the chaos because he continued to try and wrench the vehicle free. Finally the bolts beneath the hydrant sheared and it toppled over with barely a trickle of water. Still unable to see, being freed from the obstacle didn’t help Lawdog. In another vain attempt at escape, he veered into a telephone pole which snapped off and dropped across the bed of his truck. There were cries from the men but any injuries didn’t appear to be life-threatening. The passengers streamed from the vehicle, taking cover behind it and returning fire.
51
Conor and Wayne ran along the town’s riverfront back street. The Bond trucks had passed them. They heard the sound of their engines echoing off buildings and there was nothing they could do about it. Just as Conor had expected, they were behind the curve, however, they could recover. Barb’s team was supposed to be hidden safely in the woods along the route. The Bond would continue on their way. They would have to stop for sleep though. Conor would push through and catch up with them. He would stop them and finish the job. That certainty went out the window when the gunfire started.
Conor ducked into a loading dock and tugged Wayne in with him. He yanked his radio from his pocket and yelled into it. “Barb, what the hell is going on?”
Her reply was immediate and irritatingly calm. “I took it upon myself to slow the enemy.”
Conor could sense the underlying meaning behind her tone. She knew she’d defied him but also knew that it was too late for him to do anything about it now. They’d just have to roll with it. She’d done that with him before, just never on matters of this scale. Through the radio, Conor could hear gunfire raging around her. “I had a plan, daughter. I made that clear to you. Engaging these people was a very bad idea. People could die because of this.”
“Letting them get ahead of us was a very bad idea,” she countered. “We may never catch up with them again. That would have defeated the point of this whole mission, father.”
He took a calming breath. “There’s a reason you kill a hornet nest by spraying it and then getting the hell out of there. Even if you have to go back a couple of times to kill them all, you don’t get hurt that way. You know what happens if you poke the nest with a stick? They all come spilling out at once and you lose control of the bloody situation!”
“I see your point,” Barb conceded. “That’s kind of where we’re at right now.”
“No shit!”
Their conversation was interrupted by three men in full load-out emerging from a cross street behind Conor and Wayne. They weren’t pursuing Conor but were likely attempting to circle behind Barb. Conor, already pissed off because of Barb’s decision to engage The Bond, handed his radio off to Wayne and stepped clear of the loading dock. His rifle was already up and he snapped off three quick shots, hitting each of the three surprised men in the face. As they stumbled back, he tracked them, putting a second round into each man for good measure.
Conor stepped back into the loading dock area and snatched his radio from a stunned Wayne. He patted him on the back and gestured down the road ahead of them. “Let’s move!”
Wayne raised his own rifle and flipped off the safety. Instead of running blindly to put distance behind them and The Bond, he moved cautiously, ready to drop anyone who stepped out in front of him.
Conor constantly swiveled between the view ahead of him and behind him. He keyed his radio. “Barb, we can talk about this later. You need to get out of there now. The town is overrun. Did Jason reach you with your horses?”
“Roger that. He’s waiting behind the building. We’re going now. We’ll be crossing the river behind our camp and waiting on the hill above the river. Wayne was at our camp this morning. He can show you where it was.”
“If we don’t reach you in thirty minutes, move out,” Conor said. “We’ll catch up on the road.”
“If it comes to that we’ll leave two horses behind on that hill for you.”
Barb was waiting on his response when Jason opened fire from behind the building. She ran across the flat roof and peered over the brick parapet wall. Jason was leaning from behind the building and engaging a shooter hidden behind an old Subaru parked along the street. Barb pulled a grenade from her vest, pulled the pin, and embedded the grenade in the windshield of the Subaru. When the man raised his head to investigate, his top half was vaporized in a pink, frothy spray.
Barb faced her stunned companions. The two terrified women, Sam and Shannon, were doing an outstanding job. They’d done everything she asked. “Ladies, we have to go now. Let’s move.”
While those two negotiated the rusty fire escape on the back of the building, Barb addressed the panicked inquiries from her father. “Sorry, Dad. Had to deal with something. We’re bugging out.”
“Roger that. Be safe. And if I give you another set of instructions I bloody well expect you to follow them.” Without waiting for a response, Conor pocketed his radio and devoted his full attention to the hunt for bad guys.
“Barb said they were crossing the river behind her camp. She said you would know where to go.”
Wayne nodded frantically, never taking is eye from his optic. “We’re close. A couple hundred yards.”
“Don’t let that distract you. That’s room for a lot of bad shit.”
“Got it, man. I’m on it.”
They continued to move along the back street like a well-oiled machine. They hugged the back of old brick buildings, ready to take cover if things got hairy. The one thing they had going for them at this point was that The Bond was probably not after them specifically. Their focus was likely directed toward the team of shooters who had engaged them from the front.
Another pair of Bond soldiers popped out of an alley, well in front of Wayne and Conor’s position. They should have paid more attention to their surroundings before skidding into view like that.
Conor whispered, “You take right. I’ve got left.”
The two enemy soldiers did not even notice their pur
suers, so intent on getting to Barb’s position. That wasn’t going to happen. Conor and Wayne opened fire. Both men flinched and fell but they weren’t out of the fight. They twisted on the ground and shot back.
Conor latched a hand onto Wayne’s gear and flung him toward the safety of a recessed doorway. He dropped to a knee, making himself a smaller target, and returned fire.
“Body armor!” Wayne bellowed.
Conor had seen that too, switching his selector to fire three-shot bursts. He dropped one man with a barrage that caught him in the armpit. Wayne dropped the second with a bullet beneath the chin. With the targets neutralized, Conor stood and gestured for Wayne to come with him. They paused at the fallen men.
“Keep watch,” Conor hissed. “We’ve got people who need this gear.”
With Wayne watching for bad guys, Conor retrieved the men’s armor and weapons. It was an ungainly bundle but he was counting on the fact that they didn’t have far to go. If he could get across the river with it, he could drape it over a horse. A shout in a nearby alley put them on guard.
“We need to go,” Wayne said urgently.
“Over the guardrail. We’ll follow the riverbank.”
They sprinted toward the guardrail and climbed over it, their burden of rifles and gear clattering as they made their way down the steep bank. Someone, likely the Army Corps of Engineers, had covered the bank with large boulders to prevent it from washing away in floods. It made the climbing difficult. The rocks were slippery and there were plenty of holes just waiting to trap a limb.
“If I slip and break a leg just shoot me,” Wayne muttered.
“Same here.”
Taking to the riverbank had been a good call. By the time they reached the bottom, they could hear voices on the street above them. No one appeared to be thinking about what might be below them, and no heads appeared. Everyone was too intent on reaching the people who had been shooting at them. Conor prayed Barb was no longer there. The girl had had plenty of time to cross the river and take cover, but just because he’d told her to certainly didn’t mean she would. They’d been down that road today already. All he could hope was that she learned from the experience.
52
“I got’em,” Jason said, staring through binoculars. “They’re on the riverbank.”
He was watching the town from across the river, waiting to see if Conor and Wayne needed assistance. Conor had suggested, perhaps even gone as far as ordering, that they all pull back out of range of The Bond’s guns, but no one wanted to go. Barb only managed to get some of her people to retreat when she reminded them they needed to get the horses to safety or they’d have a very long walk home. The rest, a little more than twenty men and women, were hunkered down in the wooded foothills above the riverbank. It would have been a decent hiding spot in mid-summer, the hardwoods fully leafed-out and the grass high. This time of year, only the broad trunks of oaks, maples, and poplars provided any cover. They would stop bullets but they didn’t provide much concealment unless you kept yourself glued to the back of them.
Barb rushed to Jason’s side and squinted toward the river, trying to make out the moving figures in the jumble of rocks. “The streets must be overrun with men or they wouldn’t choose that route. That’s slow going.” The part she didn’t mention was that it was probably her fault, because she’d poked the nest. If she’d listened to Conor the town would not be crawling with men now. They’d have gone on their way and they could have engaged them later under better conditions.
“I can see Wayne pointing out our camp. They’re almost at the crossing,” Jason said. “They’re not the only ones.”
Barb took the binoculars from Jason’s hands, only asking for permission to do so once she already had them to her eyes. Sam was frowning at her abruptness but Jason just grinned. He thought Barb was funny but that might change after he had to live with her for a while.
Concerned about the proximity of The Bond soldiers on the road, Barb keyed her radio. “Barb for Conor. Barb for Conor.”
Everyone around her listened for the response but there was nothing.
“He may have it turned off with so many bad guys around,” Sam said. “Wouldn’t want it giving him away.”
Barb was glued to the binoculars, frowning and biting her lip from the anxiety that consumed her. “They’re ready to go for it. They’re going to cross,” she said. “They can’t see the men in the road above them. They can’t see up over that riverbank. If they run out now, they’re going to get mowed down.” She handed the binoculars back to Jason.
“They’re in the water,” Jason announced.
Barb and her people had crossed on horseback. The water wasn’t much above knee-level to a person, but it was frigid, fast-moving water, and the slippery rocks made it difficult to move quickly. There would be no running under those conditions. Once you were in the water and exposed, you were committed to the endeavor.
“They need cover fire,” one of Wayne’s men, a burly guy named Chuck, said. “We need to help them out.”
“Then we need experienced shooters,” Barb snapped. “We can’t afford anyone shooting too low. We’ll kill the men we’re trying to help.”
“It doesn’t have to be accurate,” Chuck offered. “Just has to make those bad guys run for cover.”
“That’s probably about four hundred yards,” Jason said, shaking his head doubtfully.
“I don’t remember the exact drop on a 5.56 round at that range but I’m sure it’s a couple of feet,” Barb said.
“We have a couple of hunting rifles in the group,” Jason said. “There’s several .30 caliber or better. They’re a better option at this distance.”
“Get them down here,” Barb said.
Jason, Sam, and Chuck spread the word among the group and shooters came forward with .308s, .30-06s, and even a .303 Enfield. They dropped to the ground and leveled their rifles over downed trees. Barb was running a 1x6 scope with a combat reticle that quickly allowed her to determine range while looking through the optic. She chose to shoot from a standing position, bracing her rifle against a sapling.
“What’s happening, Jason?” she asked.
“The men are still at our old camp. They’re studying the horse tracks.”
“What should I do?” Shannon asked Barb. She’d been silent until this point, afraid to leave the reassuring presence of the only people she knew among this group. She was just trying to stay out of the way.
“That shotgun you’re carrying is wrong for this kind of fight,” Barb said. “You just stand ready to provide aid if it comes to that. Be ready and be tough.”
Shannon nodded. “Got it.”
“They’re following the horse tracks,” Jason said.
"If they start following those tracks..." Sam began.
"They'll find Wayne and Dad in the river," Barb finished. There would be no way around it. Through her scope, she could see the two men in the waters of the Levisa River, struggling with their burden of gear, the current, and the numbingly cold water. She couldn’t help but whisper them encouragement. “Come on, come on.”
"I think we need to start blasting,” Chuck said. “They’re going to be seen and then it’s going to be too late.”
"No," Barb said firmly. “You shoot without my go-ahead and you’ll be the first to die.”
Seeing the expressions on the faces around her, Barb tried to reel it back in a little and explain herself. “On the off chance that they might slip across the river unseen I don't want to draw any attention to them. We wait until they’ve been spotted and we only react if we have to."
"It may be too late by then," Jason countered.
"Tell me something I don't know," Barb snapped.
Jason pointed at the river. "They’re almost across. Just a few more feet."
Everyone shared the desperate urge to pull the two men forward, to make them move faster, but all they could do was watch helplessly.
Everyone froze when a single shot split the
air.
There was a solid whap as the round struck Conor in the back. He arched, then pitched forward, falling onto the shore. His legs were in the water, his upper body on the muddy riverbank. He clawed at the ground, trying to pull himself forward.
Barb searched desperately, trying to locate where the shot had come from. It had not been the small group they were watching. The Bond soldiers standing around her camp, studying the horse tracks, were doing the same thing she was doing, trying to spot the shooter. They saw him at the same time Barb did. It was a solitary man standing back toward the center of town, hundreds of feet from her camp. He was at the guardrail separating the road from the riverbank, his rifle braced on the guardrail. He was lining up another shot.
Everyone, from The Bond soldiers to Barb's team, heard the echo of the man's shouted cry. "In the water! Crossing the river!"
"Fire!" Barb shouted.
She swung her rifle from the men at her camp and onto the man who'd fired on her father. She hastily gauged the distance and opened up, trying to disrupt his follow-up shot. Her target was at the limits of both her optic and her rifle but she rained rounds all around him. There were no hits but she’d put him on notice. He was scared. His only cover was the guardrail and he tried to make himself small enough to hide behind it but it was ineffective. Dead grass and weeds rose to cover everything below the guardrail but she was certain of where he was, even if she couldn’t see him. She walked rounds into that grass until she was rewarded with a high-pitched scream.
“Got ya, bastard,” she whispered as he rolled backwards and writhed on the asphalt.
She swung back to the group at her old camp. She desperately wanted to drop her optic a little further and check on her dad, to see if he’d crawled to safety, but she didn’t want to take her gun out of the fight. Her team of long-range shooters with their bolt-actions was firing effectively and scoring hits but their rate of fire did not match that of the men across the river. With their full auto and select-fire weapons they could spray the hillside if they got the opportunity. Her team tried to prevent that, laying down shots with such precision that none of the Bond soldiers dared approach the guardrail either to send more rounds into her father or return fire on her team.
Brutal Business: Book Three in the Mad Mick Series Page 29